Two years ago, a group of Ugandan chimps provided a blow to the idea that humans are the only animals that truly behave selflessly to one another. These chimps showed clear signs of true selflessness, helping both human handlers and other unrelated chimps with no desire for reward.

The question of why we help each other, instead of looking out for ourselves, is one of the most compelling in modern biology. Evolutionary and game theory alike predict that selfish behaviour should be the rule with altruism the exception, and animal experiments have largely supported this idea. Nature, ‘red in tooth and claw’, is painted as a fierce competition between selfish individuals and their even more selfish genes. In this stark landscape, true altruism is apparently a rare quality and some scientists believe that it’s one that only we humans possess.

Even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, are not exempt from this dividing line. Certainly, there is a large amount of anecdotal evidence of chimps helping each other or even saving each others’ lives. But some thinkers believe that this behaviour, along with other seemingly selfless animal acts, is actually self-serving in one of two ways.

The chimps could be helping their relatives in order to advanced the spread of its own genes, which family members are likely to share. Or they could be doing a favour for another individual, in the knowledge that it will be repaid later on. Either way, it’s the do-gooder that eventually benefits. Humans, on the other hand, seem to flaunt this rule. We often help others who are not relatives and who are unlikely to repay the favour. We go out of our way to be helpful, and sometimes even risk personal harm to do so.

In 2007, Felix Warneken and colleagues form the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have found compelling evidence that we are not alone. Contrary to previous studies, they have found that chimps also behave altruistically in a very human way. They help out unrelated strangers without expectation of reward, and even go to great lengths to do so.

Warneken studied 36 chimps at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Uganda and looked at their willingness to help a human handler. To minimise the effect of any human-chimp bond, he only looked at chimps that were born in the wild, and used experimenters who the chimps had never seen before.

In the first test, the chimps saw a human unsuccessfully trying to reach a stick that they themselves could reach. Warneken found that chimps were all too happy to pass the stick across, regardless of whether they were rewarded with a banana or not. In fact, the only thing that affected their readiness to lend a hand was whether the human was struggling for the stick or just passively staring at it.

He found the same thing when he ran a similar set-up with a 36 eighteen-month-old human toddlers, but with toy cubes in lieu of sticks. At that age, a baby’s mental abilities are thought to similar to those of chimps, and indeed the only real difference between the two was that the babies were quicker with their assistance.

Passing a stick across is obviously fairly easy but would altruism persist if there was effort involved? Warneken tested this by changing the experiment so that the chimps had to climb over a raceway and the toddlers had to walk past a series of obstacles. Those that helped in the first test were happy to do so in the second, again without any rewards.

A skeptic might argue that this doesn’t show anything. During their stay at the sanctuary, the chimps could have learned that helping any one of their strange two-legged keepers was worth it. The acid test then, was to see if the chimps would help each other.

The first chimp – the subject – could only get into a room with food by lifting the chain attached to its door. But it couldn’t reach the chain – only a second chimp, the observer, could do that. And once again, the chimps proved their selflessness, lifting the chain for their fellow chimps the vast majority of the time.

This striking result flies in the face of other studies, which have failed to find altruistic behaviour between chimps. But in a related commentary, Frans de Waal, an international expert of ape behaviour, claimed that these were more tests of generosity than selfishness.

They created specific situations where chimps were motivated to look out for themselves and the species can’t be judged on these scenarios alone. It would be like claiming that all people are selfish after watching the self-interested behaviour of commuters. Failing to show altruism is not the same as proving that it doesn’t happen.

But it does happen – Warneken’s experiments are striking indicators of that. In the third test, the chimps were unrelated, the observer had no chance of getting a share of the food, and their roles were never reversed so there were no opportunities for payback. Clearly, humans are not alone in our desire to help each other. Chimps are now our fellows in altruism and it’s likely that our common ancestor did the same.

It’s particularly fascinating that rewards in the first two tests didn’t affect the chimps’ behaviour. This suggests that chimps don’t continually analyse the pros and cons of helping their fellow – if they did, the reward would have motivated them to help even more often.

Instead, de Waal believes that the chimps have evolved psychological systems that steer them towards selflessness. In essence, natural selection has done the analysis for them and decided that altruistic behaviour works to its advantage in the long run. Selfless behaviour then, can evolve for selfish reasons, and that strikes to the very core of the debate on altruism.

Spend enough time reading about this field of research, and you could be forgiven for thinking that some scientists are taking cynical glee at ‘explaining away’ altruism. The extreme reductionist view is that discovering the evolutionary origins of selfless behaviour discredits that behaviour, somehow making it less worthy. As Robert Trivers put it, these models are designed to “take the altruism out of altruism”.

But this viewpoint is blinkered and too focused on the past. Evolutionary explanations can help us understand where an unusual behaviour like selflessness comes from, but they do not alter the value of those behaviours. They can tell us about how a behaviour arose, but not about an animal’s reasons for behaving in that way here and now.

Take sex. Its adaptive benefits are clear – it continues the line and promotes genetic diversity. But animals don’t consider the issue of reproduction every time they have sex and for the most part, humans actively deny it!

According to de Waal, we should now turn our attention to the psychological processes that foster altruism in chimps, and how they are different from those that work in our own minds. Do chimps share our strong sense of empathy, that fuels selflessness by letting us identify with the emotions and needs of others. Do their cultures, like ours, punish and vilify selfish behaviour?

There are 8 Comments. Add Yours.

Sean Craven
May 23, 2009

This is really interesting stuff, especially when considered in conjunction with studies on altruism in infants.
In my experiences with small children the impulse to help is strong and inborn — they are responding as much to an inner desire to help as to the needs of others.
What I’m suggesting is that there may be a selfish component to altruism, that it’s an itch that we like to scratch.
Which doesn’t diminish it, in my opinion. I think you have a very good point to make about the desire to eliminate the values placed on behaviors.
To go further, I’d suggest that one of the reasons for public hostility to the sciences is that people feel trivialized by these kinds of analysis. I disagree with that position but it does take some thought to be able to accept the legitimacy of both human value systems and the knowledge that they’re essentially the result of a complicated chemical reaction.

Marc Abian
May 23, 2009

You negleted to mention the impacts this study would have in relation to the feasibility of helper chimps

Thomas Kluyver
May 23, 2009

It doesn’t sound like they’re ruling out reputation effects. Chimps are surely intelligent enough to recognise and remember individuals, so even without the immediate prospect of repayment, helping could be advantageous in the long run if it makes others more likely to help you.

Fox1
May 23, 2009

Evolutionary and game theory alike predict that selfish behaviour should be the rule with altruism the exception, and animal experiments have largely supported this idea. Nature, ‘red in tooth and claw’, is painted as a fierce competition between selfish individuals and their even more selfish genes.

Isn’t that actually not true of game theory as long as scenarios are iterative and the actors maintain memory of previous “episodes?”

Russell
May 23, 2009

Except for humans, I doubt animals ever “consider the issue of reproduction” when having sex.
Has anyone studied whether there is a connection between generosity and the portion of its life during which an animal depends its parents? Both chimpanzee and human parents decide how much to invest in the care of their children. Parents might be more inclined to and better care for generous and helpful children, with the evolutionary pay-off that they can better raise more children. Of course, juveniles soon become more interested in their own mates and children than their parents and siblings. There’s obviously a tension, well-known to the in-between generation. Intuitively, though, it seems the larger portion of life dependent on parents would provide stronger selection for generous behavior.

Lilian Nattel
May 24, 2009

It’s very interesting–and shows again that humans are on a continuum with other animals and not unique.

Free Radical
May 24, 2009

I was involved in a discussion recently on another science blogging website where a writer (whose principle concern was actually discrediting Richard Dawkins’ “selfish gene” theory) argued that even in HUMAN society, true altruism – that is to say, sacrifice of that which one does not have in excess – is too rare in nature to have an impact on evolution. I found that ridiculous, said so, and was glad to read this article afterwards. Way to go.

Continuing the Discussion

[…] fact of nature, even in the animal kingdom. This was first observed in 2007, when a group of chimps in Uganda was found helping unrelated chimps, and even human handlers, with no desire for payback. […]

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